Maria Antonietta Torriani "Marchesa Colombi"

She was born in Novara in 1840, into a family from a modest background. After her father's death, her mother is forced to remarry a much older man with whom she has another child. These were the years that Marchesa describes as "dead calm" in "Un matrimonio in provincia" (1886).

She attended the Civic Institute of Arts and Crafts in Novara, where she distinguished herself for her aptitude for writing, but achieved poor results in 'women's works'. From an early age, she stood against traditionally feminine roles imposed by society.

Starting from the first issue of the “Corriere della Sera”, Torriani has a column entitled "Open letter to the ladies", where she talks about the new trends in women's clothing.

While writing for the Milanese newspaper, Torriani chooses to sign herself with the literary pseudonym of "La Marchesa Colombi", drawing inspiration from the comedy by Paolo Ferrari, "La Satira e Parini" (1858), in which "i marchesi Colombi" are characters "futile and immoral". An ironic choice, given that with this name Torriani signs her collaborations with newspapers and magazines as an "expert in fashion and good manners".

Without wishing to elevate her work to a moral treatise, with "La gente per bene" the Marchesa suggests to her readers how to always be in order of appearance and kind in ways in all phases of their life: childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity and old age. Instead, dedicate only one chapter to men.

For each situation, the Marchesa suggests how to behave without neglecting any aspect, from the dressing table to the table setting. Nor does she omit advice and suggestions directed to young women on how to arouse the interest of a possible future husband: a real training manual for the gentlemen and ladies of the newborn Italian nation.

In 1882, almost a beautiful
career, the Marchesa Colombi wrote two librettos for the theater: "La
Creola" and "Il violino di Cremona. "The style used is fully
compliant with the contemporary librettist canon, albeit contaminated by
disheveled and vaguely decadent forms.

 

She writes "La Creola" with her husband Eugenio Torelli Viollier. The melodrama is rich in literary suggestions and "sociological and anthropological contents linked to slavery and colonialism". The chorus within the work gives voice to a social criticism, while the female characters become allegories of the "condition of women in civil society" of the time.

Around the 10s of the twentieth century a cordial correspondence began between Torriani and Antonio Curti, the Milanese playwright, dialect poet and writer. In those years, Curti was carrying out an "Inquiry" on the figure of Napoleon I Bonaparte, interviewing various key figures of the contemporary cultural scene, including artists such as Boccioni or other writers such as Cordelia.

It emerges the great admiration and respect that Curti has for the Marchesa Colombi, as a writer and above all as a woman of culture.

Marchesa Colombi works’are rediscovered in the early 1970’s, when the publisher Einaudi decides to reprint "Un matrimonio in provincia", and Natalia Ginzburg writes the introduction to the volume. The enthusiastic words of Ginzburg, who relives moments of her childhood in the descriptions of the Marchesa Colombi, inspires Italo Calvino to write a review for the back cover of the same volume.

Thanks to the positive comments, the publication is acclaimed in newspapers and by critics, leading to an actual rediscovery of Torriani over the last years as a writer and as a woman of her time.